Debuting in theaters,
and on Fandor, last Friday Josephine Decker’s first two films – Butter on the
Latch and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely – made less than a year apart announces an
interesting new talent to the independent film world. A former performance
artist (she was apparently the woman who got naked in front of fellow
performance artist Marina Abramovic during her The Artist is Present exhibit –
and seen in the excellent documentary about Abramovic), Decker’s first two
films are existential horror films that slowly build a feeling of dread
throughout their slight running times. Butter on the Latch is the first, and
better, of the two films – largely improvised by its stars, and set mainly
during a New Age retreat in California, as two best friends – Sarah (Sarah
Small) and Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence) seem fine at first, but are torn apart
by tension – that is only partially explained. We constantly get have the sense
that something bad is about to happen – and it does in the end. Or does it?
Thou Was Mild and Lovely was scripted by Decker, and is more conventionally
satisfying, but also slight less ambitious and ambiguous, and leads to a more
standard climax. Both are good little films though, and are best seen together
for maximum impact.

Butter on the Latch
opens in New York – with a performance art piece starring the main character
Sarah. On the streets after the performance, she gets a frantic phone call from
a friend, although we only hear Sarah’s part of the conversation. Her friend
may be being held somewhere, or perhaps just had a one night stand gone bad.
Sarah seems about to lose it – but then goes back to normal, dancing at a club,
and then waking up the next day, naked, with strangers – a situation she flees.
A smash cut later, and we’re in California with Sarah, and her best friend
Isolde – who has just gone through a breakup. They’re at some sort of retreat –the
type of place where all the campers participate in a drum circle around a
campfire. The tension between the two of them grow – especially after Sarah
starts flirting with another camper, Steph (Charlie Hewson). The two women are
best friends, but in many ways opposites – Isolde seems comfortable in her own
skin, and with her own sexuality – while Sarah feels like an outsider to both.
There are some creepy scenes of the pair – and later just Sarah – walking through
the forest at night, and talk of Eastern European folklore, about dragons and
spirits. Is something out there? Does that explain the finale? Or is it all
just Sarah? The movie doesn’t explain which is part of its strength.

Thou Wast Mild and
Lovely is more straightforward. A farmhand, Akin (indie stalwart Joe Swanberg)
is hired to work the summer for Jeremiah (Robert Longstreet) and his daughter
Sarah (Sophie Traub). The father and daughter are close – perhaps not quite incestuously
close, but pretty close to that. Jeremiah is a loudmouth bully, who belittles
the mostly silent Akin every chance he gets. Sophie is overtly sexual towards
Akin – but also somewhat disturbed. Akin is played almost as a blank by
Swanberg – a character who lies constantly, but has his darker side as well –
although Swanberg never really lets us see that side of him.

Of the three characters,
really only Sarah is of interest. Jeremiah is too one dimensionally gross (an
unfortunate cliché about Southern farmers Decker indulges in) to be of real
interest, and Swanberg’s Akin, even though he is the central character, is such
a blank that he goes beyond ambiguous and just becomes dull. But Sarah is torn
between these two characters anyway – damaged, like the men, but more
unpredictably so. You’re never quite sure what she’s going to do next – and Traub
is great in the role.

Decker indulges in some
pretty silly clichés, and narrative paths, throughout the two films –
purposefully so for the most part (I cannot believe that Decker means us to
take a scene where we see two people engaged in sex from the point of view of a
cow seriously). The cinematography is almost all handheld, and the editing
intuitive (Decker does the editing herself), and in both films she succeeds in
building up a mounting sense of dread – the promise of violence not unlike a well-executed
horror film. While Decker does give us the ending we expect in both films – to a
certain degree anyway – they also work (more so in Butter than Thou, but I digress).

Neither of the films are
great – they are more than a little rough around the edges, and indulge a
little too much in clichés, both in terms of character and narrative. But they
also show a promising start to a directing career for Decker. She has worked as
an actress before for Swanberg – who returned the favor here – but in just two
films, Decker has shown more talent than Swanberg so far. I know who’s next
film I’m looking forward to more.

About Me

I am an accountant, living in Brantford, ON - and although I am married and have beautiful daughter, I still find time to watch a lot of movies. This blog is mostly reviews of new movies - with other musing thrown in as well.